THE first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one.
Alternatively, you could act like Peter Lawwell.
And keep denying, denying, denying in the vain hope the world will eventually go away and leave you alone.
Well, what else is there to say about a man who watches the away end in Udine unfurl a giant banner reading F*** UEFA and declares the halfwits responsible "aren't real Celtic fans".
Not real Celtic fans? Is he having a Steffi Graf?
These people paid about 400 quid a head to follow the team to Italy ten days before Christmas. If that doesn't make them real fans, what does?
Do they need to actually pay the team's hotel bill out of their own pocket? Buy a new left-back?
Because plainly Parkhead's chief executive isn't impressed by them merely travelling that far at that much expense at this time of year with that slim a chance of coming back happy.
Though, before the Green Brigade take this as some sort of compliment, one word of advice. Don't.
Because being there through thick and thin doesn't make them any less stupid, crass or bullying than the world already knows them to be.
That stunt the other night could cost their club big time, both in terms of another fine and permanent damage to their reputation around the world.
Mind you, at least they have an excuse. They're numbskulls.
On the other hand, Lawwell is an intelligent man. A financial whizz. A high-flying negotiator.
Yet he still refuses to own up to the fact that these morons are his club's problem and therefore his problem.
More to the point, he also seems blind to the fact that, in the eyes of those whose motto is F*** The World, not only are they real Celtic fans, they see themselves as the only true Celtic fans.
In their heads, they're upholding a noble cause. They're defending an oppressed community kept down by a bigoted establishment. They're freedom fighters.
Anyone who criticises them is criticising Celtic and, therefore, to be despised.
So when police officer Eddie Smith reports them to UEFA for singing pro-IRA bile, they turn up with a banner abusing him.
When UEFA crack down, they abuse them.
When everyone else in the country is respecting the dead of two wars, they turn up with a banner reading No Bloodstained Poppies On Our Shirts.
They produced stickers branding former chairman John Smith a war criminal because he was once Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Back in January, when I had a go at the behaviour of some of them at Ibrox, they turned up the following week with a banner reading F*** Bill Leckie. Everyone who isn't them is wrong. Everyone who isn't with them is against them. Everyone else is a bigot, not them.
Even Neil Lennon is getting it in the neck from them for having a pop over the Udine nonsense.
Though it's a fair bet the true paranoids among them will be tapping their noses and going: "Aye, he wants to agree with us, he's just scared that The Establishment will hammer him for it." It's all cobblers. But nothing more so than Lawwell's repeatedly-mumbled threat to "identify" offenders and "deal with them".
Here's a clue, Peter. They're the ones whose banners always have the same typeface and which are always in the same section of the ground at home games. The section you set aside for them.
Promising to "identify" them is like looking at the dugout and vowing to work out which one's Lennon from a description of him as the wee, angry ginger fella. The longer Lawwell remains in denial, the more powerful the banner-waving balloons will become in their own minds. The more powerful they believe themselves to be, the harder it will be to shift them.
And with every game where they get to hang about like a bad smell, the closer Celtic will come to their next embarrassment in the eyes of society.
So the situation's simple, Mr L.
You can deal with the problem. Or you can keep hiding from it and let it turn into a full-blown crisis. Your call.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/sport/columnists/billleckiesports/4006341/Theyre-morons-but-whats-YOUR-excuse-Peter.html#ixzz1hA2UiHZ2
Posts
